The author, Jerry Van Der Kolk, has been involved directly with the Horticulture Industry for over 20 years. He now devotes his time to growing hard-to-find hostas for hosta collectors via his popular website http://www.DirectSourceHostas.com. http://www.DirectSourceHostas.com
Some people say hostas and fertilizers do not mix as they are such as hardy plant that they don't need to be traumatized by fertilizer. Furthermore if you optimize your soil in the first place you won't need fertilizer.
Most professional hosta gardeners recommend a 10-10-10 blend of fertilizer for hostas as a kind of universal food for the plants.
The great debate. Bare Root or Potted Hostas? Which is the best choice for your average home gardener to purchase? Should you only buy potted plants or should you consider buying bare root hostas as well?
Let's cover the basics. A bare root hosta is simply a piece of freshly dug plant and root material. When you dig up an existing hosta clump and divide a few eyes from this clump, you have a piece of bare root hosta.
Ordinary house mice, field mice, garden mice and voles can be major sources of grief in a hosta garden. They are most interested in your hostas during colder seasons when the hostas are dormant. The crown of the hosta in this case serves as a juicy meal for wintering mice. Damage to the crown can cause your hostas to die. Therefore we want to prevent any pests such as mice from damaging our plants.
In the spring, when things are just beginning to warm up and the soil is still cool and moist, hosta lovers go out to count eyes. Gently uncover your hosta beds to reveal the green nubs poking through the soil. Each nub is called an eye, and it is the beginning of a complete set of hosta leaves.
There are two reasons to count hosta eyes. The first and most important is simply so you can take joy in how much your hostas have grown, and so that you can anticipate how beautiful they will be in a couple of months.
Every year around the New Year Hosta plant enthusiasts begin to get that familiar itch. After the busy Holidays wear off it is time to start thinking about Spring! If you have any sort of green thumb you know exactly what I am talking about.
I am amazed every year with all the new plant introductions. Sometimes I wonder where all these new plants come from? Most of all I am curious where are people going to plant all these new plants? I guess I should not worry about it because it seems the Horticulture Business is booming.
One of the reasons that hostas are such great low maintenance plants is that they don't require any winter care at all. You don't have to get out any rolls of plastic or stakes as hostas are very strong plants that go dormant in the winter.
Most of the time hostas lose all of their foliage by themselves. However the bigger varieties have very large leaves that may need some help from you.
Ordinary house mice, field mice, garden mice and voles can be major sources of grief in a hosta garden. They are most interested in your hostas during colder seasons when the hostas are dormant. The crown of the hosta in this case serves as a juicy meal for wintering mice.
There are several ways that you can address this situation. One of the most effective ways is to simply get a cat or two.
The Hosta Finder is a reference for over thousands of cultivars. It provides hosta prices, size, color, and nurseries that sell a particular hosta. The basic function of the Hosta Finder is two-fold. First it helps you find or locate a specific hosta variety which you may have difficulty finding locally. Second, it allows you to determine a fair price by providing an average price for a specific hosta variety.
Looking for your local hosta society? This may be a little difficult especially if there does not seem to be one in your local area. There is no rhyme or reason as to why a particular area seems to have one and others don't. Sometimes there are more local ones in rural areas and sometimes there is more in urban areas. Usually you can find a cluster of them in a place where hostas are common and the soil is ideal for growing them.
There are all kinds of websites devoted to Hosta Sports on the Internet. Hosta Sports is simply another term for Hosta cultivars, which have become one of the fastest growing passions of gardeners partly because it is so easy to create hosta tissue cultures and collect pollen from these hardy shade-loving plants.A love for hosta sports is a relatively recent phenomenon, having only taken off as a gardening hobby in the past decade.
The author, Jerry Van Der Kolk, has been involved directly with the Horticulture Industry for over 20 years. He now devotes his time to growing hard-to-find hostas for hosta collectors via his popular website 
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